What I don't get is why we aren't seeing this in his approval ratings. Are they just lagging? Is his hard base like 40% of the population?

IMO the people who design children's play areas are generally not that great at it. I say that as a preschool teacher.

that is a fine idea, and also totally a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_playground

Yeah, me too. I visited one in London a few years back, and it looked like a ton of fun

and that is why we organize

at minimum it would be nice if they just looked at the spacing and organization of the different palettes. This does not look tidy... or professional, really. It looks cramped and messy.

This is part of how wealth concentrates in countries without a welfare state. The property market becomes more and more unavailable for young people, and older people have to sell their homes to afford proper care.

I can see a situation where that makes sense. A colleague who keeps morale up can be at least as important for the team as one who works hard

...on the other hand, it can also be a way for managers to reward their loyal favorites for no particular reason.

I dunno, this makes me happy we have collectively bargained wages at my workplace

In a lot of places, not just far-right assholes, the word "woke" has taken on the role of terms like "social justice warrior" and "political correctness" - i.e. in describing a self-righteous, superficial, performative and preachy kind of style.

Yes, that is not what the word "originally" meant, yes it is partially the result of right wing propaganda, yes "political correctness" and "sjw" have similar issues, but it is still a real thing.

What the man seems to me to be trying to say is that their goal was to do a medieval gay romance in a way that was not preachy or superficial – is that not good? Isn't there a bit too much token representation and pinkwashing going on?

That makes me think of when TrueCrypt suddenly stopped being developed: https://www.techmonitor.ai/...

America doesn't lose wars, it loses interest

I think it's most common to call it a "transactional" personality – and the way of thinking is often called "transactionalism", although that's kind of unfortunate since that's also the name of an approach within philosophical pragmatism. I've heard "instrumentalism" as well, which is also unfortunate in that it shares the name of a sort of pragmatist philosophical approach.

The latter term has been used some in discussions about kindergarten policy here in Norway, to criticize perspectives that only consider kindergartens, and childhood, to exist for the sake of adulthood or adult society.

I'm Norwegian, not British, but we also have a constitutional monarchy. I like it for mostly cynical reasons. They take care of ribbon-cutting and other big ceremonies so the politicians can focus on policy, and they give us a "head of state" that's statistically less likely to become a dictator than an elected president is.

And all the drama and bullshit is a continuous reminder of what a bad idea it would be to institute genuine monarchy.

That makes more sense, I mean, the guy volunteered to fight in the Spanish civil war

abstaining from voting is the same as casting half a vote for Hitler

opportunistic assholes with delusions of grandeur will use whatever ideas are fashionable to do their thing. In the 20th century, socialism was such an idea

Why are you writing in Polish?

Conspiracy theories are generally very big, very serious accusations being made confidently without serious evidence.

The prevalence of conspiracy theories does indeed make it harder for people who want to stay grounded in reality to accept criticism of the powerful – this is one of the harms of conspiracy theories. It makes it harder for genuine serious criticism to be taken seriously – this is why the Putin regime allows conspiracy theorists, but persecutes serious regime critics.

The US has a two-party system. The way I understand it, if you want that to make sense, you have to take into account the fact that the two parties have different wings. Among others, the Republican party has both an old neocon wing, and a newer MAGA one, the Democrats have a centrist neoliberal wing, and a more new-deal-style classical progressive one.

If you want to change which wing is dominant, you need to get into the party and start showing up at meetings, and/or work indirectly through your union.